Posted tagged ‘Work’

Well, I’ve been home for four days now. The culture shock has yet to hit in though. Mostly, I’ve caught up on about 11 months of sleep I missed, had many a doctor appointment (I’m healthy, no cavities, got a bit more near sighted), and been catching up on work. So I have yet to really venture out and adjust (I did get to taco bell! rest easy now people!). I suspect the culture shock will really hit me when I head to D.C. tomorrow to meet some friends, go to a wedding, and meet Tanya from Parisian Spring. Out and about in the culture, I’m going to be freaked out.

I’m already weirded out by the big cares and huge roads. And it did take me a few minutes to remember which coins had which value to them! lol.

But home is going to be a busy time. I only plan on being here for about two months and I have a lot to do in that two months.

I need to:

a) stabilize my income a bit more to ensure I start to actually save more than I spend!

b) Get so far ahead of my work that when I go backpack again, I can have fun and not work so much.

c) Start planning my next backpacking trip. I need to work on the rough outline of my trip to Europe and book my accommodation for La Tomatina and Oktoberfest.

I;m currently in Ko Samet, an island a few hours outside of Bangkok where it is raining. It rained yesterday too. Tomorrow is my last day and I hope it doesnt rain then. Im going to fly down to Phuket this weekend for 6 days to hopefully get some sun. I can’t go back home pasty white! I refuse! worst comes to worst, i’ll go down to the perhentian islands in Malaysia for a few days before I fly back home.

I picked up a second SEO client. That makes two. I’d like one more…in fact, all I have room for is one more. So if you are interested, I have good rates 🙂 But I’m excited I have two clients now.

There is a lot of travel coming up for me. On the 24th I am going to Singapore for a few days. My visa runs out here and I need to hop the border for a new visa and Singapore is the place to do it. I look forward to eating indian food with my hands again.

A few weeks after that I fly to Scotland where I celebrate turning old…then back to America for a little while. That’s a bit scary. America is a strange place.

There’s a lot going on but I’m glad to be finally moving around again.

Sometimes when I tell people who I make money I feel like it’s bragging. In fact, I find myself avoiding the subject all together as often as I can. People always want to know what I’m doing now or how I travel so much or make money. Invariably, I give them the short answer- I run travel websites (Or I tell them I do internet marketing). This leads to some follow ups where I tell them I write and run budget travel websites. How do you make money? Is it a lot of work? Is it hard?

And so I go into detail about what I do and how I do it and why I do it. Mostly, that leads to a lot of wows and a bit of jealousy at being able to have a job that pays well and lets me go where I went.

Then they ask me about what I am doing next and I tell them about my travels until I see that look in their eyes where they are waiting for me to stop and I shut up.

My friend Cody (he does this too) and I were talking about how pretty easy our jobs are. I mean a hard day at the office for me is 7 hrs of work. I can go about 3 or 4 days without doing really anything and still mange to find income. I was staying with Cody for a few days when I first came to bangkok and though we sat on the comptuer pretty much all day, I think I saw him eek out abour 4 hrs of solid work. (facebook and streaming media suck you in!)

But the point is no one really wants to hear about your easy job. I bet most people are more productive on monday than I am in a whole week. So when I start telling people just exactly how my job works and what I do, I’m starting to feel like I’m bragging.

Maybe it is just how I say it but I really dont like talking about it because no one wants to hear about how easy your job is and when i tell people i can see that “i hate you for your easy job” look.

I got a job. I’m working as a teacher here in Taiwan for 10.5 hrs a week. I know. Only 10 hours a week? Yeah but it covers all my living expenses and gives me time to continue growing my web business, which is growing quiet nicely.

The downside is that I have to teach little kids and I hate little kids. I don’t think I could do it for more than ten hours a week anyways! And they give me a visa to stay here so that is pretty sweet.

Other than that- not much to report. I really should get out more but I really want to get the ball rolling on these last websites. I do go out a lot- but that is pretty much to the bars. In Taiwan, every club is all you can drink for 10 bucks. Insane huh? And on wends this big bar has free drinks. Its very good on the wallet. I hardly spend any money!

Not really digging the food here though. I miss Thai food and the great restaurants in Bangkok. I can’t find a good italian place and there’s no indian food here. I’m so glad I’m going to Bangkok next week because I am going to eat like a king!

Now that I found out KLM runs $180 RT tickets to Bangkok from Taipei, I’ll probably take frequent trips!

Running multiple websites is very time consuming, especially when I want to launch three more this month. To help manage all the work and research, I have decided to hire a virtual assitant. Why not outsource all the grunt work and concentrate on the high value money making stuff.

VAs can range from 3 dollars to like 20 dollars an hour depending on what country you hire them in. I went for the three dollars an hour b/c I have simple tasks and a tiny budget.

So far no luck. I’m on my third VA. The first one never did the work, the second one never did it on time or told me of problems, and this one is a mixed bag. The current VA gives me excellent work but doesn’t do all of the work. I’ve sent him a few annoyed/angry e-mail about it. I hope he explains himself. But if he doesn’t give a good explanation, it is off to find VA #4.

I mean how hard is it to submit my articles? I give them everything they need, they just need to cute and paste. Same with directory submission and social media submission. Yet apprently that is too hard. I might have to move up the value chain and pay someone more money, which means I am going to have to use them less which means I’ll have to do more work myself…

Why is it so hard to find good help? Why!

I’m hoping this current one does work out because the work he does do is excellent and amazing and I want to keep him!

So I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails and questions about what is going on in Bangkok. For starters, I’m in no danger. All the trouble is at the airport. Despite what you see on the news, its business as usual in the city except in areas where the protesters are. The airport has been closed since Tuesday and the government has moved its headquarters to the northern city of Chiang Mai.

No one has been able to get out and about 100,000 people have been stuck. The airport was going to open today but it most likely will stay closed until the kings birthday on the 5th. Both sides won’t do anything because they won’t disrespect the king. (The Thais love the king.)

The army has moved in around the protesters but so far nothing has been done. It’s been a quiet few days. There was talk of a coup a few days ago but, while those rumors are still around, it seems it will be a few days before a coup, if there is one.

It’s all pretty silly and the PAD (the yellow shirt protesters) have totally screwed Thailand. The high tourist season is just starting and because the airport has been shut down and will continue to be so, it most likely means that tourism for the time being is not going to happen. I suspect most tourist will cancel their vacations. Backpackers will stay because they do all of southeast asia and will just enter from a different city but families aren’t going to come, business execs won’t come. All in all, the high season is over before it even begun. Hotels were already suffering because of the unrest and the bad economy- this will be the nail in the coffin.

On the bright side, it means that prices will be cheap when I go to the islands for the holidays. Already hotels are offering steep discounts.

This will cause irreparable harm to Thailand’s image. It’s one thing to protest at the government house away from everything, it’s another thing to take over two airports. No one is going to want to come here now. I hope this doesn’t sink the Baht too much, otherwise I will be forced to leave for greener economic pastures.

The PAD claims they just want the corrupt politicians out but they are just as bad. Everyone here in this country is corrupt. What they really want is power back in the hands of a small elite group of Bangkokians. The current party has given a lot of power to the rural people and the upper class Thais don’t like it. It’s all about power and because deomocracy took theirs away, they want to return to a military dictatorship or appointed government. None of which will fly.

The long term outlook for this country is pretty bleak. They are already behind the curve on a number of things, this is a nail in the coffin. If there is a coup, it probably won’t go down well with a lot of the populace.

We’ll just have to wait and see. For now though, business continues and we are all just going on about our day.

Though since I work at the airport, my days are pretty empty now. No work for the time being.

My Story

I'm a diehard traveler who has been on the road since July 2006. I'm recent geek convert who runs a a few travel websites and is slowly being turned into a social media junky. I'm blogging here about my life, travels, blogging issues, and anything else I determine is geeky or cool.